January 29, 2009

Sometimes I wonder what people are hiding from me. Then I wonder what I’m hiding from them. I don’t really know either. What is to be hid? Nothing really, but something always ends up that way. Things are not always what they seem in this place. The illusions of youth fading away into the truths of experience. Take nothing for granted, believe only what can be proven to oneself.

January 19, 2009

Really now? What happened to rain, Smokey Bear? I am fairly confident there are firefighters who prevent forest fires. I am not a firefighter. I’ve been lied to my whole life. I even met the bear once and he told me, before even introducing himself, “Only you can prevent forest fires.” I felt empowered, like I had a responsibility to my fellow living creatures to protect them. I also experienced a great amount of stress because most of the day I was busy at school, watching television, or listening to Hanson and was left with little time to scour the forests of Appalachia for fire hazards.

I felt as if I was being negligent towards my job, until I completely forgot about it when Biggie died. He was my favorite. Everyday after school, before our mother got home, my brother and I would watch MTV. Biggie would almost always be in the top 10 music videos, along with N’sync and the Backstreet Boys, but we braved through their songs just to get to Notorious B.I.G. I loved the fact that Biggie and I shared a common interest, super nintendo. This was revealed to me in the infamous composition known as Juicy.

I never really knew why it was called “Juicy”, or why he was shot, but I did know one thing, I was in kindergarten and I should not be listening to him. I didn’t really care though, as long as Antonio was doing it I knew it was cool. I would like to add that that was not a constant, I never approved of the spiky hair or the scarface posters. As time went on, I strayed away from hip hop, soccer, and eventually Super Nintendo. I was left with nothing of interest, so I made pretend I was smart and cared about everything in the world. This only later led me to being a middle school “gangster”/ nerd, and thankfully an eventual lover of all things reggae.

Middle school was a confusing time for me. I really didn’t know what to do, how to do it, or even to ask why we do anything. So in 6th grade, 50 cent reigned supreme. I also threw in a bit of Trick Daddy and eventually Kanye’s early stuff. This was a horrible time. A time before I knew the beauty of the sweet rhythms of Bob Marley & the Wailers. A time where I realized I had a mind, but didn’t know how to use it. Which explains a lot about my taste in music.

By eighth grade I totally gave up on music and was convinced that after puberty there is nothing to live for, so I did my homework and thought I would be an engineer. At some point I realized that I hadn’t the slightest idea how to do any sort of math and that being an engineer required that heavily, so I gave up that aspiration and went to high school.

My eighth grade class contained exactly eleven students. My freshman class had over two hundred. I didn’t really know what to do. The only exposure I had to a large school was on television, and they always talked about bullies but I didn’t really need to worry about those. I was one of five family members in the school, we were known for our ruthlessness when it came to raising hell. I was confused as to my roll in the scheme of things, I realized that my next year there would only be three of us left, and the year after that there would only be two of us. Who is to cause the trouble then? This is what I had to look forward to, and what I am living now. I don’t cause trouble in the sense that they did. They took swings at the head of the mighty Falcon while I nip at its ankles. They sped into the parking lot blasting rap, the stage I luckily already went through, now I speed in blasting David Bowie.

At some point during my first year of education surrounded by only males, I rediscovered Bob Marley & The Wailers. I say rediscover because when I was young we listened to him in the car all of the time. For a year straight it was all I listened to. My sophomore year Antonio moved to Rochester, NY to attend RIT and got a job at a local night club that displays the finest of House DJ’s. He was initially turned off by the strange (not rap) music, but later took a liking to it and pushed it into my repertoire of music.

They say ignorance is bliss, but I was miserable with myself. Oh, how I hated that music. “There are no instruments! Only computers!” The more I listened, the more I liked. From then on I’ve been piling on genre after genre to my cache of music. Since then I’ve taken a liking to everything from Pop Funk to Acid Folk. I no longer am blatantly ignorant toward everything, I am only critical of it. I also have stepped down from my position as head forest-firefighter, I felt that since I hadn’t worked a day in the last twelve years I should let some other kid have the job.

January 16, 2009

Bullshit. Why would we want that? Does anyone have any idea who these people in the government are, and what they do? They lie, cheat, and steal and you don’t notice because you are too comfortable. Now would we want someone to lie, cheat, and steal in the name of the arts? No. Let’s keep the arts pure.

January 16, 2009

January 13, 2009

Why do we wear clocks on our wrists? Why do we call them watches? Why people who wear human powered watches superior to those who run theirs on batteries?

I will be the first to say that these are all great questions, and I will also be the first to answer them.

I, for one, wear a clock upon my wrist because it is old and cracked. It ticks rather loudly and is without a battery. I wind it every morning, look at it every hour, and take it off every evening. It is kind of appropriate to have a routine with a watch. I mean, it deserves it. Day in day out it helps you count down the days to your eventual insanity. The least you could do is give it peace of mind and a good place to sleep.

A watch is called a watch for a number of reasons. One reason is because we watch them constantly. Just waiting for the next thing to do, for the next hour to pass. There is no relaxation when wearing a watch, unless it is windup. Reason number two, if a wall clock and a watch had the same name there would be a formidable amount of what is perceived as confusion in everything we do. “What time is it?” “Do I check the clock or my watch?” “I don’t know, lets go for a walk.” This is not confusion, this is trying to think inside the box but the box is too small, so you forget about it. Reason three, its easy just to accept the name for what it is, rather than think about it too much. Acceptance is one of many things I have yet to master, so I will dismiss this one as idiocy.

The battery powered watch is for the go getter, accurate time at all times. Just go and forget about it. The wind up watch is for the passive go getter. One who is a go getter only when he sees fit to do so, because if you forget to wind your watch, you don’t know what time it is. If you can’t find out what time it is, what does it matter? “Oh, my watch isn’t moving, I guess I’ll skip work today.” Thats what I like to hear. It feels nice to know that time will stop if I don’t wind my watch for thirty hours. Makes me feel like I have great power. Just call me father time.

January 8, 2009

January 8, 2009

I walk in optimistic, walk out ready to kill someone. I don’t fit the mold. Everything puts me to sleep. I disagree with everything I’m being fed. Don’t get me started on Religion class. What a waste of time and money this school has been. Maybe I should go to Vinal Tech, be a barber and be happier. Or should I conform to the mold? Should I give up all of my gifts and talents to be a worker bee? Would I then be truly happy? No, I would rather live in a box.

January 7, 2009

Imagine 1976 Rochester. Yeah, I thought you couldn’t. Not much to imagine. On rolls in David Bowie, he puts on a great show, goes back to his hotel, and gets arrested with Iggy Pop. Not only is this the only semi-interesting thing to happen in Rochester but it was also the greatest display of fashion Rochester had seen up until that date. Take a look at that hair, and that three piece suit left unbuttoned for more of that “Why hide the buttons on my vest?” look. He is also sporting the invisible tie, which had yet to hit Rochester at the time. Its well known Bowie is a musical genius, but who knew he was a fashionista. This was obviously before Labyrinth.

January 7, 2009

The life of a sailor is routine. Wake up, swab the poop deck, drink some rum, get scurvy, and sleep. We like to sleep, yet we stay awake searching for time. Time to be me, time to be free, but the water is too deep for that. Downward, downward we plunge, to the depths of the sea. Searching, searching are we. For what? We don’t know. Just something else, other than Captain Moe. He’s an asshole of sorts, a man of honorable cowardice. No wooden peg, no strange accent, just the lingering stench of pomp he has yet to wipe clean from the pits of his arms. Yo ho, yo ho. No no, we don’t say that. We don’t even drink rum, just cry, cry for our missing old mum. A sailors life is misunderstood, we don’t live on a ship of wood, it is but one of paper. Only kept afloat by hope, the hope that we do not plunge into the recesses of the sea. If our hope were to fail our parchment ship would become but one with our dreams that we visit deep in the sea, fortnightly.